Human resources professionals must address businesses’ failure to manage human capital risk and ensure workforce capacity and capability.

Peter Howes, chief executive of Infohrm, told a full capacity audience at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development’s conference last week that resourcing professionals need to formulate three-to-five-year plans to ensure demand for staff is met.

“It’s not just a human resources issue, it’s a business issue. Workforce planning is about gaining competitive advantage - we do it because the cost of not doing it is too great,” he said.

The use of strategic workforce planning is growing expediently, according to Howes, who said the number of companies implementing a strategic plan has doubled from 21% in 2008 to 43% in 2009.

Strategic workforce plans aim to mitigate risk by identifying staffing needs, creating a bond between the risk management and HR professionals within an organisation.

Howes suggested identifying a number of key skillsets and creating a number of demand scenarios which span between three-to-five years, depending on lead time for sourcing a skill, long-term business strategy and market conditions.

“Aligning workforce planning with the company’s business plan is one of the most important parts.

“What I want to see is two scenarios of possible demand for staff in the future prepared with senior line managers. There are elements that you can’t control, things like government regulations and the marketshare that the company gains, but you can give them a plan for action,” said Howes.

Joanne Davidson, role analyst at Manchester University, told Recruiter the university is setting out workforce plans for around five different “job families”.

“We have workforce planning already for our academic staff; however, for the rest of the ‘job families’ we have only dipped our feet in. I don’t think it would be too hard to set out scenarios three years into the future, but funding has a big impact for us.”

Howes warned the impact of the recession and the reduction in voluntary termination it has caused will only provide short-term relief, and companies should not be complacent about planning because of a short-term surplus in supply.